Two Wrongs Make a BCS Right

The margin between Alabama and Oklahoma State won’t be determined on the field this season. But in the college-football rankings, those set by voters and those determined by computer algorithms, the margin between those two one-loss, national-title-hopeful teams is razor-thin.

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LSU and Alabama will settle their respective claims to the No. 1 ranking on the field, but Oklahoma State’s got settled by formula.

As it happens, Oklahoma State no longer has any hope of winning a national title, or at least not the one conferred on the winner of the Bowl Championship Series championship game. Alabama edged Oklahoma State for the No. 2 position in the final BCS rankings, by seven-tenths of a percentage point. That means Bama will get a rematch in the BCS championship game with undefeated LSU. But if just a few voters had treated Oklahoma State more fairly, it could have been the Cowboys who got a chance to unseat LSU for the season-ending No. 1 ranking. All things considered, Alabama probably is the more deserving team. It took two wrongs in the flawed BCS system to get that right.

The first wrong was committed by voters in the two polls used by the BCS: the coaches’ poll and the Harris Poll. Even Pistols Firing, an Oklahoma State blog, could accept voters ranking the Cowboys third, behind Alabama. But six coaches had Oklahoma State fourth or worse, which is much harder to defend. No one-loss team besides Alabama has a legitimate argument that it is better than Oklahoma State, which beat eight bowl-bound teams. Stanford, the only other one-loss team from a major conference, beat four bowl-bound teams, plus USC, a Top 10 team that is serving a two-year bowl ban. Bama beat six bowl-bound teams, three of which finished 6-6 and one 7-5. Certainly no other team besides those three and LSU is a plausible pick for the top four, yet somehow Oklahoma State got one No. 5 vote from the coaches.

Coaches, at least, have reason to be biased since they can reap benefits for their school, conference or own paycheck by voting strategically. Harris Poll voters have no such excuse, yet 16 ranked Oklahoma State below No. 3, including seven who ranked the Cowboys fifth or sixth. If those voters and the coaches who stiffed the Cowboys had ranked Oklahoma State third, the gap between Alabama and Oklahoma State would have halved. Then, if a few more voters had appreciated Oklahoma State’s pasting of in-state rival Oklahoma on Saturday in the annual Bedlam Series game, 44-10 — an impressive rout of a Top 10 team in the season finale — the Cowboys could have overtaken Alabama.

Oklahoma State’s only chance of a payoff for running up the score was that it would sway voters, because the BCS’s computer-ranking component by policy only includes ratings that don’t take into account margin of victory. The goal is to discourage piling points on hapless opponents, but voters are under no obligation to ignore such scores, and displays of dominance over nominal peers, such as the Bedlam blowout, contain useful information that the computer algorithms are required to ignore. That’s the second wrong I mentioned previously, adding to the wrong committed against Oklahoma State by the voters.

Fortunately for BCS defenders, this wrong negates the first, even though in the short term it appears to hurt Oklahoma State. While the Cowboys did blow out Oklahoma, Alabama more consistently routed its opponents during the season. There is solid evidence that Bama is hurt more by this policy than Oklahoma State. Two of the BCS computer rankings are run by Jeff Sagarin and Kenneth Massey, who also produce rankings that do take into account margin of victory. In each of Sagarin’s ratings, Alabama is ahead of Oklahoma State, by about the same margin. Massey’s rating that the BCS uses gives a slight edge to Oklahoma State, but his rating that accounts for margin of victory puts Alabama in the No. 2 spot by a wide margin.

There is another flaw in the BCS’s compilation of computer rankings: It makes no distinction between a small and large gap between two teams. This differs from the BCS’s formula for calculating teams’ points from the two vote-based rankings it uses; there, the margin between Alabama and Oklahoma State matters, not just the rank order. But in the computer rankings, all that matters is which one leads the other, even though in some cases the gap surely is smaller than the statistical margin of error. I approximated how the BCS ranking would look if it treated the computer rankings as it does the vote-based rankings, and found that it would help Alabama. That’s because Alabama trails Oklahoma State by a narrow margin in threeofthe four computer ratings that favor the Cowboys.

The BCS got very lucky this year: Oklahoma State was hurt by questionable votes while being helped by esoteric quirks in the computer-ranking formulas, and the two problem areas canceled each other out enough for the better team, Alabama, to play in the national-title game. BCS defenders, though, might want to study the haphazard way the system chose between those two teams and take steps to ensure future seasons featuring a pair of worthy contenders aren’t decided by a couple of lucky breaks.

Comments (5 of 33)

oSu got hosed. The game they lost only went to OT because of local refs calling a field goal bad that upon closer inspection was good. The article that showed that if you take the names off the teams and just show their resumes; then 70% pick oSu shows how biased the BCS is.

2:57 am December 11, 2011

FAN wrote:

If Alabama beats LSU that will mean the SEC champ will not win a 6th straight national title. I don't know if that is any consolation if that streak is broken to the rest of the conferences. It is automatic that a SEC team will win a 6th consecutive BCS title, 7 titles out of the last 9, and 8 of 14 BCS title games. Auburn was also undefeated in 2004 and were denied a shot at the title, when USC routed the Sooners by 36 points. If OSU would have lost to a ranked team instead of Iowa State they should be playing LSU. OSU lost to an unranked Iowa State; Alabama lost to #1 LSU by 3 in overtime, and that is why the #2 SEC western division team is playing for the BCS title.

2:16 am December 7, 2011

Andy wrote:

"No one-loss team besides Alabama has a legitimate argument that it is better than Oklahoma State, which beat eight bowl-bound teams. Stanford, the only other one-loss team from a major conference, beat four bowl-bound teams, plus USC, a Top 10 team that is serving a two-year bowl ban. Bama beat six bowl-bound teams, three of which finished 6-6 and one 7-5. Certainly no other team besides those three and LSU is a plausible pick for the top four, yet somehow Oklahoma State got one No. 5 vote from the coaches."

Really? How about Oregon? They ran away from Stanford and played LSU tougher than any other team save Alabama. Their ranking was hurt by the loss to a very good USC team, but there is no comparison between USC and Iowa State, and does anyone think if OSU had played LSU, the Cowboys would have won? I can certainly understand why some voters might rank Oregon higher than OSU. It isn't all about number of losses, it's also about who those losses were to, and by how much.

9:29 pm December 6, 2011

How do you know Carl? wrote:

You don't know that they got it right and unfortunately we will never know. Both Alabama and OSU have legitimate arguments for making the BCS National Championship. No one can swear that Alabama would beat OSU or OSU would beat Alabama unless they actually played. The current system favors the biggest brands. If OSU had a Longhorn on their helmet OR if Alabama were Mississippi State in the exact same scenario then the results would flip. And, the sad thing is, everyone knows it.

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